My eldest child, born in 2009, does not remember a time before she could instantly summon a video call with her grandparents on the other side of the planet. It took science fiction writers no time at all to predict such technology as soon as they saw a black-and-white television broadcast back in the early twentieth century. Obviously we’d be able to hold “face to face” conversations over long distances as if the other person were just on the other side of a pane of glass.(more…)

It has been fascinating to watch the results of the proliferation of smart phones in the last decade, both the imaginative apps that can be made and the cumulative effect of how having a computer, camera, internet communicator, and HD video camera in everyone’s pocket has been shaping out society. Events like the Arab Spring or the demonstrations in Ferguson, Missouri have been enabled by internet connectivity, and also reported on, not necessarily by journalists, but by citizens on the ground, in real time.(more…)

Ever since smart phones became endowed with GPS, the apps that attempt to show you where your friends are have become as ubiquitous as the horrified privacy backlash against them. I cannot claim to have ever really used such apps because I live in a rural community, most of my best friends are sprinkled sparsely across the globe, and the friends that I do meet up with are either not that tech savvy, use a different smart phone OS, or have the more common sense about the privacy problems than geeky desire to test out what an app can do.(more…)

Over the past few years, the technology of 3D printing has shown itself to be a complete game changer. In a few very short years, with the initial investment of a printer, it will be possible to download physical objects. The plastic molding industry is going to be the first to feel the pain but eventually all manufacturing will be at risk. I expect to be a grandfather before complex electronics can be printed at home, but a wide variety of knickknacks and general household replacement items will be coming sooner, e.g. already you can download and print replacement knobs for a variety of items.(more…)

I had never heard of a “light field” camera until I began hearing marketing buzz about the Lytro camera last year. To be perfectly honest, I still don’t really understand how the technology works. I have a pretty good layman’s grasp of how normal lens optics work to focus an image onto film or a CCD sensor, and how and why focusing at a certain depth works, but the “light field” camera concept still seems a bit like magic. They say that it captures not only the intensity and color of the light hitting each sensor pixel, but the direction of said photon as well. Huh? And somehow this magically allows the focal length (what depth in the image is in focus) to be modified after the moment has been captured, just like they do in Hollywood movies and television where a detective tells a lab geek to “enhance this area of the photograph here” and they can now magically read the perp’s license plate. Like I said, it still seems a bit like magic, but it really, really works.(more…)

There’s been a bit of an online privacy storm lately over the fact that Facebook doesn’t remove all the cookies from your browser when you log off. Every three or four months, there’s a big “OMG!! Facebook is EVIL and breaching my privacy!” wave that runs over the online community before everyone forgets it and keeps using the service.(more…)

This summer, I purchased a tiny computer, called a Fitbit, that I wear on my person that tracks my movements when I am both awake and asleep. Then, when I spend a few minutes in my office, with the device still clipped to my clothing, the information about my previous days’ movements are uploaded wirelessly to the internet and a report prepared for me, detailing how much I tossed and turned in my sleep each night and how much exercise I got. The Fitbit is a very advanced pedometer, counting steps and general movements and accelerations, but the integration with The Cloud is what makes the device special.(more…)

This past weekend, my wife and I were in the living room watching our two year old daughter, Nora, play with her toys. Suddenly, Nora stood up and walked out of the room. She came back with my iPhone that she had fetched from my office. She handed me the phone. “Nora pictures! On TV,” she demanded with a gesture towards the television.(more…)

I have now had an Apple TV (2nd gen) for two weeks and I thought I’d post some thoughts about it. Unlike the first generation Apple TV, this one has no permanent storage on the device. Everything is streamed from an outside source. So all my movies and television shows live in my iTunes library on my computer, which I can browse on the Apple TV and select an item to view. It takes about two or three seconds sometimes to start playing, but then the rest of the video downloads into a buffer while the first part of it is playing, much like when you view a video on YouTube on your computer.(more…)